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“Fishbone could be a band that doesn’t use profanity, goes and does the festival circuit, plays the oldies and rakes in a ton of dough,” observes Norwood Fisher. “But we chose to try to forge new ground, go into uncharted territory on some levels. We are where we are because the path that we walk.” “Where we are” is complicated, like everything about Fishbone. Appropriately, Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler’s documentary, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone—opening at New York’s ReRun Theater on 7 October—offers a few versions of that story, told by band members as well as their colleagues and relatives.
Part biography, part cultural history, and part funky-form experiment, this vibrant, unusual film locates the band in multiple contexts, not least the politics of race and racism in the United States. While it includes interviews, family photos, and footage of the band’s electrifying performances, it also features animated sequences and competing accounts of particular events. Angelo Moore laments the losses they endured, remembering that he imagined the band “like a family or a gang: you see each other for as long as forever is supposed to be.” He and Norwood are still working to keep their family together. Angelo says they’re “like a fucking married couple that want to be divorced for a minute, but can’t because we’re married. This thing wasn’t working out, but we got kids. That’s the music.” And for that, we can all be grateful.
See PopMatters’ review.
